Best practice: What pages to add on an E-commerce website
A multi-pages website is crucial for any type of business that sells products or services online. When your site consists of several pages, it improves content organization, helps navigation, and boosts search engine visibility. A multi-page website also gives you space to adapt to business changes: show new arrivals, highlight limited offers, etc.
In this guide, you will learn what key pages to add on your Instant Site and what content to provide on each page.
Essential pages for an E-commerce website
As a business owner, you may need an online presence for different purposes: to sell online, tell about your brand, showcase bestsellers, and so on. Depending on your goals and on how much information you want to share, the number of website pages may vary.
In Ecwid (aka Lightspeed eCom), you can add up to 100 pages on your site. Each page can have its own topic to guarantee an excellent shopping experience for potential customers.
The pages that your E-commerce website may benefit from are the following:
- Homepage
- About us
- Online shop
- Highlights of products, services, or special offers
- Delivery & return info
- Customer reviews
- Contacts and locations
- Frequently asked questions (FAQ)
- Legal pages
You can use some of the pages listed above, or create a page specific to your business needs.
Homepage
As a book begins with a cover, your website starts with a homepage. And, just like in the saying, people will judge your brand by looking at the homepage.
To provide a top-notch first impression of your e-commerce website, focus on offering a compelling snapshot of your brand identity and key offerings. An eye-catching and intuitive design with clear navigation creates an effective homepage.
The content of a homepage consists of texts and media such as images and videos. Each type of content has rules or guidelines that you can apply to make the first page of your website look stunning.
Homepage text guidelines
Show more, tell less. Try to keep headlines sweet and short. Do not overwhelm visitors with tons of text, provide key information so that people get the idea about what you or your brand offers.
Use concise headlines. All headlines as well as any short descriptions should match in lengths, style, and tone of voice. Say, a playful tone compliments your brand. Then try to keep it playful across all text content. And if a serious tone of voice suits you better, don’t joke around.
Make Call-to-Action (CTA) clear. When you announce a sale, present a new collection, or just want to redirect visitors right to the online shop, make the button and banner text super clear, avoiding any double-meanings.
Focus on customers. Create user-centric content, focusing on how your product or service benefits the user. Address their needs and pain points.
Keep in mind mobile optimization. Ensure your text is optimized for mobile devices. Short paragraphs and well-formatted content work best.
Homepage design & navigation guidelines
Use engaging visuals. It’s best to show high-quality real photos of your products from photo sessions, or your retailer’s archive. Alternatively, you can find images on photo stocks. Remember, a homepage is like a cover of a book—it should sell.
Use a consistent color scheme. Having branding colors is always a good idea. If you don’t have one, just try to stick to several colors throughout your homepage and the site.
Navigate people. Organize relevant content on the separate pages and provide links in the navigation menu. Use clear and descriptive labels for menu items so that even first-time visitors easily find what they are looking for.
Make design responsive. Ensure your homepage is optimized for various devices, including desktops, tablets, and mobile phones. Instant Site adapts to all-size screens. Additionally, you can customize the mobile look for some site sections.
Remember that you can always change the design and main message of your homepage. For example, add seasonal promotions or information about opening a new store.
About us
The “About us” page serves as a window into the essence of your brand, giving customers a deeper understanding of who you are, what you do, and maybe even your manifesto and culture values. While there may be variations on what exactly to tell on the page, there are some general rules on how to tell this. Let’s start with general design advice for the About Us page, and then switch to inspiring ideas on what to share with customers.
General guidelines for the About Us page
Build trust. #1 reason for having the About Us page on a website in the first place. Include trust-building elements such as awards, founding dates, other people reviews, your team photos—anything that you can come up with.
Express your brand personality. Whether it's humor, style, or manifesto, let your brand's unique character shine through. You can tell your unique story through images or text. You can describe your philosophy and values to set yourself apart from the competition.
Use quality imagery of you and your team. Showcase your products, team, or behind-the-scenes moments to provide a visual representation of your brand.
Use customer-centric language. Despite the page being about you, frame your content in a way that emphasizes how your brand benefits customers. Use language that speaks directly to their needs and desires.
Update the page regularly. It’s a good idea to keep the About Us page updated to reflect any changes, achievements, or new milestones in your brand's journey.
What to write on the About Us page
There’s no strict rules on what to write to build trust and keep your audience engaged. Dive into the origins of your business, introduce people behind it, share the inspiration for starting a business, or tell whatever you feel is important for people to know and what makes your business stand out.
Here are some examples from other Ecwid stores:
Introduce the community. In case your business relies on your local community, you can tell the story of that community and share some group photos.
Tell the story behind a name. If you have a catchy and witty name, tell how you come up with it.
Share your mission or philosophy. Tell what makes you stand out. Maybe you offer a sustainable alternative to everyday products, or you make traditional tools, supporting simpler, and more resilient life.
Brag about your rich history. Some businesses that were established 30+ years ago even provide establishing documents on their About Us page.
Reveal your motivation. Maybe you have a dog that inspired you to create dog treat bundles, or maybe a movie inspired your new apparel collection.
Online shop
Instant Site has a built-in online shop. You can add it to any page, but if needed, you can also turn it into a catalog and even hide. Additionally, you can highlight bestsellers and special offers. For example, you can show items from key categories in the slider above the shop:
As for the design tips on the shop page, the general rule here is to make products stand out, while also making the shopping process convenient for customers.
Here is a checklist of what to think about when adjusting your online shop:
Showcase featured products. Highlight featured or best-selling products prominently to grab attention. You can decide what products to highlight.
Use high-quality visuals. Use high-resolution images for products, or even videos. Include multiple images showcasing different angles and features of each product.
Describe products in detail. Provide comprehensive product descriptions, including key features, specifications, and sizing information. You can create collapsible blocks for each product topic.
Cross-sell and upsell for more profit. You can enable Related products to be shown at checkout. That way, customers are more likely to add more items to the cart.
Product highlights & special offers
You can highlight particular items on a page, providing high-resolution images alone with detailed description that explains every nuance of your must-have products. That makes a page a perfect tool to draw your customers attention to particular products, exclusive offers, or new arrivals.
In Instant Site, you can use sliders, Special Offers sections, scrolling message (marquee), and other tools to create a stand out content:
Here’s what to think of when creating a “Special Offers” page:
Create eye-catching banners. Use visually appealing images to interest people in your special offers and product features.
Use clear Call-to-Action (CTA). Ensure prominent and clear CTAs for each highlighted product or special offer to guide visitors to take action. Encourage customer engagement with buttons like "Shop Now," "Explore More," or "View Details."
Use keywords for description. Create compelling and concise descriptions for products you highlight, or for your special offers. Having a detailed description also serves well when it comes to SEO: when you add keywords on the page, the search engine robots find those words, and show relevant content to people who search related goods.
Optimize page for SEO-boost. Optimize page content for search engines to ensure better visibility in search results. The more relevant keywords you use, the more likely to gain organic traffic to your page.
Delivery & returns
The most common question from customers is about shipping. To address these concerns, describe all the ways you deliver goods, the approximate delivery time, and your policy on returns. If you ship internationally, it’s a good idea to list all the countries that you ship to.
Here’s the essentials for the Delivery & Returns page:
Provide clear policies. Clearly outline your delivery and returns policies. You can do it with legal pages. Having a shipping policy is also required for other things, for example, when you advertise on Google.
Make info easy-to-find. Adding a link to the Delivery page to the header menu is always a good idea since this info is essential for customers.
Give step-by-step return instructions. Provide a step-by-step guide for the returns process, making it simple for customers to initiate returns. There’s even a special layout for this in the Delivery & Payment section in the section library.
Display contact Information. It’s best to display contact details for customer support related to delivery and returns right on the page. Include email and, if possible, a helpline.
Customer testimonials
Adding customer reviews to your site builds trust, credibility, and provides social proof. Reviews are especially useful for people who are new to your brand, and searching for firsthand experiences.
Here are some tips for collecting and publishing reviews:
Collect reviews with emails or on social media. You can edit Ecwid automated emails to include requests for customers to send a review about their purchase, or ask them directly on social media. Offer discount codes to encourage customers to leave their opinion.
Publish diverse сontent. Include a variety of reviews, both positive and negative, for authenticity.
Use images. If customers provide photos of them using your product, include those photos to reviews. Visuals bring more trust with them.
Contact and locations
You can provide your contacts and store addresses on the homepage, but if you have several brick and mortar shops, dedicate a page to locations. That creates an impression of a transparent and accessible company.
Here are some advice on what to provide on the Contact and Location page:
Provide multiple contact methods. Offer multiple contact methods. Some people prefer email, while others may prefer a phone call. Instant Site supports several contact options to fill in.
Show links to social media. Ensure that your customers can effortlessly reach out to you.
Include an interactive map. In Instant Site, you can add a section with a location that will show the map with the exact address to improve the customer experience.
Add location-specific Information. If you have multiple locations, provide specific information for each, including addresses, phone numbers, and unique features. In Instant Site, you can specify business hours for each location.
FAQ
A page with frequently asked questions addresses the most common queries that potential customers may have. By proactively providing answers to questions related to shipping, returns, product details, and more, you not only demonstrate transparency but also save time for your support team.
Building an ultimate FAQ page leads to increased customer satisfaction, reduced inquiries, and a more efficient customer journey. Additionally, a well-crafted FAQ page contributes positively to your website's SEO by incorporating relevant keywords and providing valuable content. The page also works well if your products have specific requirements or conditions of usage.
Legal pages
Legal pages are crucial components for an E-commerce website that ensure compliance with various regulations. Having essential legal pages such as Privacy Policy, Terms of Service, and Disclaimer builds trust with visitors and protects your online presence.
Your Ecwid store has a special setting for legal pages, so you don’t even have to create a separate page for them in the site editor. All you have to do is go to Settings → Legal in your Ecwid admin and add legal pages. Once you do that, they will automatically appear in your site footer. Customers can click the links in the footer to open your policy or terms of service.
What is more, you can ask customers to agree with legal pages at checkout to comply with laws and regulations of your country:
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